


Lay Me Down (in a Bed of Roses)

by hollyandvice (hiasobi_writes)



Series: The Ballad of a Dove [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Medical Torture, Psychological Torture, Temporary Character Death, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 16:48:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7471500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiasobi_writes/pseuds/hollyandvice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"An ugly little one the Emperor has brought us this time. But the same species as the Champion, is it not?"</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"Indeed."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"Let us see if it is as resilient as its predecessor."</i>
</p><p>Lance pays the price for his leg. It's steeper than he thought it would be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay Me Down (in a Bed of Roses)

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to [Matt](http://corgiss.tumblr.com/) for the drive-by beta, all remaining mistakes are my own. [Reblog from here!](http://hollyandvice.tumblr.com/post/147317158198/fic-lay-me-down-in-a-bed-of-roses) Fic and series titles from [If I Die Young by The Band Perry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NJqUN9TClM)

He knew there would be a cost to getting the cybernetic leg. He knew it would probably be painful. He just didn't know how painful.

\----

Lance isn't sure what to expect when they first take him into one of the Druid's experimentation rooms. At least, he assumes that's what this is, what with all the equipment around the room, everything from items that are obviously medical in nature to ones that look borderline torturous covering the walls.

Lance doesn't have time to examine much of anything, though. He's shoved bodily into the room, and then the door slides shut behind him. All of the Druids in the room turn to face Lance as one. The face of the one nearest to him twists into what might be a smirk. Then it gestures at Lance, and his body is being drawn forcefully toward it by an unseen presence.

"An ugly little one the Emperor has brought us this time. But the same species as the Champion, is it not?"

"Indeed."

"Let us see if it is as resilient as its predecessor."

There's a low murmur of assent throughout the room, and Lance swallows, attempting to keep his fear in check at the implication of those words. He's seen what these Druids' work did to Shiro, and if Lance knows one thing it's that he isn't as strong as Shiro. These Druids are going to break him down to his tiniest pieces and they're not going to bother putting him back together again.

Desperately, he wonders if there's a way out. A way to escape. A way to get free of what the Druids are going to do to him. But if it took Shiro a year to get out when he was under average guard, there's no way Lance is going to make it out of maximum security. More importantly, he agreed not to fight the Druids. For all that he wants to be able to fight his way out of this, he has a decent amount of respect for his pride as a paladin, and he doesn't intend to go back on his word to another former paladin, even if that paladin is Zarkon. It's an aching reminder in the center of his chest that there's no way out of this for him until his friends come to save him. That all he has left is to lie back and submit to experimentation and torture until he's freed.

Knowing that his friends won't stop in their efforts to save him until they're out of options isn't exactly a relief. Knowing that Keith likely won't stop until he's dead is a cold comfort that doesn't soothe him in the least.

For a split second, Lance thinks about giving up. He casts his eyes quickly around the room and finds three different tools that are likely candidates for causing a quick death, though probably also a painful one. He's considering it, thinking about how best to make his move, when he realizes that none of the Druids have made a move for him, other than the one that dragged him forward. They're all waiting, watching him thoughtfully, as though they know what he's thinking.

 **We do, child.** Lance jumps at the voice that had embedded itself directly into his mind. **We do know what you're thinking,** and this time Lance can tell that it must be one of the Druids speaking from the chuckle in its words. **We know your every thought.**

Lance flinches. It's invasive in the worst possible way, and he finds himself wishing again for escape.

 **You can, you know,** the same Druid says conversationally. **You can take the easy way out if you want. We'll even help you along. Make sure that it's painless and swift.**

"Will you quit doing that?" he snaps. "I don't like hearing all that chatter inside my skull."

"Very well," the Druid says, tilting its head to the side. "But the offer is the same."

Lance stares at the Druids around him, trying to understand what they're offering him. "I don't have to let you experiment on me?"

"No." And that's a different Druid this time. "You may choose your own path, young paladin."

It sounds nice. Not having weeks or months of pain and torture unfurling in front of him. To be free of fear and pain. It sounds nice.

It also sounds too good to be true.

So Lance pulls himself up to his full height. "No. I am a paladin of Voltron, and I won't be tempted by your promises. I am a fighter, and you'll be lucky to push me to my breaking point." He narrows his eyes at the one that had dragged him forward. "Do your worst."

The terrible smirk immediately reappears on the Druid's face. "Gladly, my dear child. Gladly."

\----

For the first fifteen or twenty sessions, things are more or less bearable. They seem to be testing his limits, and whatever their basis for comparison is must be pretty low, because it takes the first four or five sessions to be painful and another ten or so to even begin to approach the intense levels of pain that he'd expected.

 **It's resilient,** one of the Druids remarks at the end of a session that had been more intense than normal. **Just like the Champion.** They seem to think that just because Lance doesn't like the mindspeak that he isn't listening to their every word. He intends to keep it that way.

**Indeed. Perhaps we should look into more of their kind and determine if it is characteristic of their race.**

Lance closes his eyes and fights to keep his mind away from his parents and his sisters. Anything to keep from letting the Druids know that there may be more to their hypothesis than they could ever expect. Because he's heard they way the other prisoners they bring in scream, and he's seen how the numbers on the machines they're attached to compare to his. He may not know anything about the Galra writing system, but he's not stupid, and he's pretty sure the fact that there are usually three to five extra symbols on his screen compared to the other aliens' means he's probably being subjected to a much greater level of pain than they are. He's noticed it too as they've traveled the universe, that the aliens they encounter don't seem to have the same levels of pain resistance that he and the other paladins have. He'd never thought much of it, but here, now, he thinks there may be something to it.

But he buries that thought deep in the center of his chest where the Druids haven't managed to reach yet, and prays that they never find it. He wants to keep the universe safe, yes, but more than that he wants to keep his family safe. His mother and his father and his three sisters and his two nieces and his nephew. He wants to keep them all safe, and if the Galra catch on that humans may be one of the most resilient races in the universe they may be more interested in extending their reach and taking over the planet. Lance can't have that. So he buries the knowledge away and doesn't let the pain reach that deep as they push and push and push him to his limits.

Those limits are farther away than even Lance himself had realized. He isn't even sure how their machines are managing to hurt him this way, whether it's electrical shock or nerve-based or something sending the pain directly to his brain. That isn't to say they don't resort to more conventional methods too. One day they shatter what must be every bone in his body one at a time, as though to see how many they can break before Lance himself breaks. To his surprise, he not only survives the smashing of every single bone, he only ever blacks out for a few dozen seconds at a time, and even that only happens near the end of the session. The Druids seem intrigued, and put him in a healing pod that seems a good deal more advanced than the one he's used to. Ten thousand years is a long time, he supposes, and medicine must have advanced along with the weaponry technology. So when they pop him out of the pod what can't be more than a few thousand ticks later and he's completely healed, Lance isn't all that surprised.

He's even less surprised that they have another go at his skeletal structure.

They try subjecting him to extreme heat and extreme cold. They stab him and they beat him and they burn him with lasers. They insert cables into his spine and needles into his lungs and, once, a wire into his skull. They poke and prod and play and he's pretty sure that by the time they're done, they'll know more about human physiology than human doctors do. It's frightening and a little nauseating, but focusing on that--on what the Druids now know about humanity--is easier than focusing on what they've done to him.

Because he was right about what they'd do; they've done everything that can be done to a human body and more, and yet they've healed him every single time, have always kept from hurtling over the brink and sending him to his death. To be quite honest, Lance doesn't want to know how they've managed to keep from killing him. The less he knows about what's been done to him, the better, at least for right now. Maybe when his friends find him, Pidge and Allura will be able to figure out what's been done and help him not feel so battered and broken. But that will, of course, have to wait until his friends come and save him.

If his friends come and save him.

Lance pushes the thought away every time it sneaks up on him. His friends are coming. They said they would, so they're coming. They have to.

They have to.

\----

The first time they take him into a torture chamber instead of one of the Druid's experimentation rooms, Lance knows something's changed even before they take him out of his cell. He'd figured something was wrong when the guard had put cuffs on his wrists and his ankles only for all four to link together in a complex pattern that leaves him struggling to walk. The guard drags him out by the arm, and Lance stumbles awkwardly down the hall. He'd long since given up trying to talk to the guards that took him to the experimentation room every morning, and this one doesn't seem any more talkative, so Lance doesn't bother trying to ask what's changed.

He figures out what's changed when the guard turns away from the experimentation room and walks down a different hall.

"Uh, buddy? Did you get lost? Because I'm pretty sure you're supposed to take me the other way."

The guard doesn't reply or change direction, and that's when Lance knows something's not just changed, but is actually very, very wrong.

He swallows, reaching back through the ages of pain and trying to remember what Zarkon had told him he would be subjected to. The Druids, yes, but there had been something else. But what?

A door to his left opens on an elderly Druid that turns toward Lance, its face cool and distant. **Punishment, child. What is left is punishment. Until you see the way of our Emperor, you will be put under my care. The other Druids have all the information they need from you, so now it is my turn.**

Lance stares at the tiny, frail Druid before him. "Come on," he says with a wry grin. "What can you do that your counterparts in their lab couldn't?"

The Druid smirks. **You'd be surprised, child.**

Lance flinches. "Can you stop doing that? I really like it better when I can actually hear you."

**No. I do not speak with words any longer, child. It is unbecoming of one of my position.**

"One of your _position_? And what position is that?"

**I, my foolish child, am the High Torturer of the Druids. You would do well to learn some respect if you do not wish to be subjected to my worst punishments.**

Lance stares. "And… and those would be?"

The Druid's smirk widens. **Why don't we find out?** With a snap of the Druid's fingers, the door closes, the restraints fall off, and Lance is being dragged bodily into the room by an invisible force the same way he had been on his first day in the experimentation room. The Druid ghosts its fingers near his face, fingers just shy of actually touching his skin. Then, all at once, its fingers touch his skin and he's thrown backward, not physically, but psychically. The sight he's met with knocks the breath from his chest.

It's home.

It's his _home_ , his mother and father and three sisters and his two brothers-in-law and all three of his little sobrinos. He swallows, his hand reaching out automatically, wanting to be sure that this is real, and he can feel the sun beating down on his skin. He chokes on a laugh, and he wants to run to them, but his legs are shaky from adrenaline and nerves and--

And then the vision is gone.

Lance falls immediately to his knees, gasping for breath. "What… What was that…?" he asks, breath coming in harsh, desperate pants. 

**A vision. The image of what your life once was, and what it could be again.**

Lance looks up at the Druid, his eyes wide and confused. "…What?"

The Druid reaches out, one hand soft and gentle on his cheek. **I can give you your family back, child. Whole, unbroken, and within your reach. The Galra have that power. Do you want that?**

"More than anything." The words slip out before Lance can stop them, honest and damning.

The Druid smiles. **Then let me give it to you. All you have to do is tell us where the princess is hiding.**

The question slams into Lance, and it feels like a crash landing in Blue. "You're asking me to give up one family for another…" he breathes out, his brain struggling to catch up from the jarring cut from warmth and home and comfort to the slow, cold realization of what he's about to be facing.

 **But are they really your family? Were they ever? Where are they now when you need them so much?** Another vision sweeps up over his eyes, of Voltron formed with his friends and a new Blue paladin. Someone else riding in the seat of his girl, taking orders and bonding with the team the way Lance used to.

He slaps the Druid's hand away. "That isn't real. You're lying to me."

**Everything I show you is real, child.**

"I don't believe you. You're a _Druid_ for god's sake, I don't have to believe a thing you say."

**You don't have to believe. Doesn't make it any less true.**

Lance spits at the Druid's feet, glaring up at it. "Fuck you. You think false visions and grandiose proclamations will break me? You don't know anything."

The Druid sighs. **Very well. I didn't want to have to turn to this, but I suppose you leave me no choice.**

The vision--though it's less a vision and more a psychic blast--that follows is nowhere near as idyllic as the ones he'd been shown the first time around. It's split second visions of his sisters subjected to physical torture, of his mother and father slaughtered, of his friends beaten and broken and destroyed. When Lance comes up from the vision, he gags, turning his head to throw up on the floor beside where he still kneels on the unforgiving metal.

 **Now you see, boy. I do not need to give you nice things to coerce you into bending to my will.** The Druid reaches for his chin, tipping his head up to face it. **Whatever you may think, I will take every last bit of weakness in you and I will destroy you. I will take you apart piece by tiny piece and I will do so without mercy. When I am done with you, you will be begging me for freedom. Now wouldn't you prefer to avoid all of that and just tell me what I want to know now?**

Lance stares up at the Druid. It's even more tempting now than it had been so many cycles ago in the experimentation room. Being confronted so vividly with the possibility that his friends might already have been destroyed leaves him shuddering and shaking in his skin. But he also knows that the only thing that would stop his friends is death, and if they truly are dead, then Earth is doomed, and Lance himself doesn't have much hope either.

So he narrows his eyes and contemplates spitting in the Druid's face, just to make his previous performance even clearer. He decides against it, choosing to glare up at the Druid with the darkest gaze he can muster.

"You think you can break me? Bring it on."

The Druid sighs, releasing his chin. **Very well,** it says, the words at once disappointed and gleeful. **The visions it is.** Lance feels his body lifted by that same unseen force onto what he'd initially thought was an examination table at the back of the room. Restraints snap over him, locking him in place on the table. **Let's see what you've got, child.**

Lance tries to brace himself for the oncoming vision, but he's pretty sure there's no way to prepare for what this Druid apparently has at its disposal.

 _Please._ He can't help sending up a silent prayer to whatever force is looking out for him. _Please, bring my friends here soon. I don't know how long I can hold out._

\----

Time loses meaning the longer they hold him captive. The torture is unending, nothing but visions of pain pain pain. At first Lance hadn't been afraid, certain that his friends would come for him. In the experimentation room he had held onto memories, thoughts of his mother and his home and his friends--Coran's ridiculous idioms, Allura's regal intensity, Pidge's raw joy, Hunk's bright loyalty, Shiro's fierce protectiveness, Keith's quiet affection. For a long time, it had been enough. The thought of dying or giving in before he gets to see his family or his friends again is more than enough to keep him strong.

It's enough, until suddenly, it isn't.

The Druid Torturer they've placed him with is skilled and knowledgeable in its art, and it doesn't often bother with physical pain. As Lance edges closer and closer to breaking point, it carefully and craftily combines the physical pain with every ounce of psychological torture in its repertoire, until Lance stops being able to tell the reality from the vision. Images of his kid sister, a slave to the Galra empire. Of his mother, kidnapped and imprisoned. Of his friends, broken bodies strapped to lions that can no longer fly for the loss of their pilots' faculties. Of Keith, barely recognizable for the mutilation that caused his death. It comes so close to breaking him, to making him willing to give in and do whatever the Galra want if only to never have to see those visions again. But he has to believe they're just that--images, visions, _fake_ \--and he has to believe they're not real. It's the only thing strong enough to let him hang onto his resolution by his fingertips, to maintain his death grip on life and the sanity that's the only thing holding him together. Because his friends are coming. They're coming.

They have to be.

\----

He's long since lost track completely of what's real and what isn't, and his captor knows it. So when it brings not one but two guards with it, the second one lugging something behind him, Lance doesn't have the presence of mind to try to try to figure out if it's real or not. When the guard drops a body clad in red paladin armor at his feet, Lance hopes it isn't. He drags himself off the tiny cot in his cell and falls to his knees, body weak from the ages of torture and everything else they've subjected his body to, but if this is really Keith…

Lance reaches for the body, shoving it over onto its back with a herculean effort. He finds himself staring down, wide-eyed, at the one person he'd been certain was stubborn enough to save him. He's not sure why he doesn't immediately burst into tears.

Maybe he just doesn't have any more.

"The others?" he asks dully.

**All dead. We simply thought you would want to say your goodbyes to your lover before we threw his body out the airlock.**

Lance does almost cry at that.

**We figured you'd want to know. Take your chance to really wrestle with the fact that they're dead before you joined us.**

That lights a fire under Lance, the first he's felt in too long, and he struggles to his feet from under the dead weight of Keith's body.

"You might as well just kill me too, because I'll never be one of you."

The Torturer laughs directly into his brain. **Oh, my dear, silly child. You don't think we'd part with such an important piece of the puzzle without being certain we'd exhausted every avenue, do you? No, you're just choosing to spend the rest of your life in unending pain by not allying with us. Your call.**

When Lance doesn't immediately respond, the Torturer shrugs, signaling the guard, who reaches for Keith's body and hauls him out the door. Lance watches, feeling more gutted and broken open than the torture alone has ever left him.

 **Well then,** the Torturer says, signaling the other guard, who moves toward Lance and cuffs his hands before grabbing him by the tricep. Lance goes, staggering, to the torture chamber and knows that this time nothing they do can hurt him any worse than he's already been hurt. It's the easiest session he's ever had.

\----

Lance lies back on the table and waits for the pain to come. No salvation may be coming with his friends dead and gone, but that doesn't mean he isn't strong enough to survive this. The door slides open and shut, and he closes his eyes, ready for whatever pain will come. Except this time, instead of pain, he gets a soft hand on his cheek. When he opens his eyes, it's to see Keith above him, face sad and concerned. "Why fight it, Lance?" he asks gently. "The sooner you give in, the sooner we can be together again."

Lance feels a sob in his chest. He knows this isn't real--they showed him Keith's _body_ for god's sake--but it's been so long that he can hardly bear the warmth in his chest at seeing his lover unbroken for the first time in so long. "How am I supposed to face you when I die if I give in? How could you ever look me in the eye knowing that I became what we fought to destroy?"

"I'll forgive you," Keith whispers, his mouth a breath away from Lance's. "I just can't bear to see you in pain anymore."

The sob is in his throat now. This isn't real, but it sounds so nice, so peaceful, not to bend until he breaks only to be forced back into one piece just to do it all over again. Anything to be free of this.

"Please, Lance. I know we said we'd save you, that you should wait. And we tried. We tried so hard, Lance. We just…. We weren't strong enough. I wasn't strong enough. Please, don't lie here and continue to suffer for a salvation that isn't coming. Just let go. You have the power to make the pain stop, so take it. Please. I don't want you to come to me broken and bloody for a cause we didn't have the strength to win."

Lance chokes on the sob, letting it free. He's a dead man already. Why not at least live what's left of his life whole and unbroken rather than in unending pain? What does he have left to gain by fighting? What's the harm in giving in so that he can be free?

If Keith says it's okay, then why not?

Lance closes his eyes, reaches deep into his mind, and takes his soul between his hands. He holds what's left of it in his shaking fingers and, without a second thought, shatters it.

With a quiet sigh and an ease born of the certainty of a coming death, Lance finally lets go.

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY SO THINGS AREN'T BETTER YET BUT I PROMISE WE ARE ALMOST AT THE LOWEST POINT! ONE MORE INSTALLMENT OF PURE PAIN AND THEN THINGS START TO LOOK UP!! (also note the tags at the top if you are concerned about anybody in particular~~~)
> 
> [Come hang with me on tumblr!!](http://hollyandvice.tumblr.com/)


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